THE VITAMINES IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM 103 



and inanition, which quickly disappeared on substituting the diet 

 by one more varied. Perhaps we are dealing with beriberi here 

 too. The appearance of beriberi in other birds is tabulated below: 



Animal Observer 



Ducks Eijkman (l.c.48) and Kulz (281? 



Geese Eijkman (l.c.48) 



Sparrows Fujitani (282) 



Quail Toyama (283) 



Jushimatsu Toyama (283) 



Parrots Fink (284) 



Rice birds Ottow (518) 



Munia maja Jansen (284a) 



Pathological anatomy and chemical pathology of beriberi in birds 



Pathological anatomy. Till recently, everyone was of the opinion 

 that in avian beriberi the manifestations in the central nervous 

 system were in the foreground. The new investigations show, on 

 the other hand, that as a result of the lack of vitamine B, many, if 

 not all, of the organs suffer, and for this reason the disease cannot be 

 thought of as "polyneuritis." Despite many attempts, it has not yet 

 been possible to find out which organ or tissue is primarily responsible 

 for the manifestations of the disease. This is of course bound up with 

 our insufficient knowledge of the physiology and significance of the 

 vitamines. 



Nervous system. We find a very good description of it in the 

 work of Vedder and Clark (I.e. 266), already mentioned, and 

 more recently in a report by Onari Kimura (285). We see from 

 these investigations, that not all nerves undergo pathological 

 changes in the same measure; for example, the vagus degen- 

 erates, but not in a high degree. However, in the opinion of 

 Kimura, beriberi is a general disease of the nervous system, and 

 this was our opinion too. We still believe that all of the hetero- 

 geneous pathological changes occurring in beriberi may best be 

 looked upon as of central origin, in so far as they may all be regarded 

 as atrophic changes. Naturally, we admit that still another inter- 

 pretation may be found. 



The nerves of the lower extremities are selectively more affected 

 than those of the upper. Especially is this true of the sciatic and 

 peroneus nerves which show a fatty degeneration, though no definite 



